


Collaboration

by orphan_account



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teamwork is an important part of being a Crystal Gem, and that teamwork extends beyond the battlefield</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collaboration

Steven tumbled out of the Temple Warp Pad, falling to the ground in front of the pad's steps. The three gems in his arms slipped away from him and bounced across the stone floor into the living room, clinking loudly onto the wood floors.

"No!" Steven got up and sprinted to where the gems had fallen. He scooped them up in his arms and set them down on the table in the living room. "Sorry, Pearl," he said to the pale, circular gem nestled between two magazines. "Sorry, Ruby and Sapphire," he said to the red and blue gems sitting on top of a stack of old newspapers. Steven turned to face the Warp Pad, hands on his hips. "Now, where's Amethyst?"

As if on cue, the Warp Pad activated, and Amethyst beamed back into the Temple, panting and holding a large rock above her head. "Haha!" she shouted, setting the rock down next to her. "I made it! That stupid monster didn't stand a chance against me, _and_ we got the Stone! Steven, did you get Pearl and Garnet?"

Steven nodded, motioning to the table. "Yeah, but uh, Amethyst?"

"What?"

Steven pointed at Amethyst's shoulder. Amethyst looked down and noticed the large, black spear sticking out of it. She sighed, rolling her eyes. "Ugh, really?"

There was a loud _poof_ and a cloud of smoke, and Steven could hear Amethyst's gem hit the surface of the warp pad. He quickly picked her up and placed her on the coffee table, next to the mugs of tea from last night. "Not you too," he said, frowning. 

Steven flopped onto the couch, exhausted from the mission and how poorly it went. To be fair, he thought he did well. He defended Amethyst with his shield once they got the Lava Stone and made their way back to the Temple, and he managed to carry Pearl and Garnet with him the whole way despite forgetting his backpack. A celebration was in order. Plus, he though to himself as he sat up, he has time to kill now.

Midmorning sunlight streamed into the kitchen as Steven got up and made his way to the cereal. He poured himself a bowl and walked upstairs, sitting down at the foot of his bed. Next to his GameStation was, still in its shrink-wrap, a copy of _SpaceTime!_. Jerry, the guy at the GameStore that Steven liked, had recommended it to him as 'an insanely difficult puzzle game, one that only the brightest minds in the world would be able to beat'. Steven took that as a challenge, and bought the game that same day. 

And now, he had all day to play it. Steven unwrapped the game, popped out the disc, and slid it into his GameStation. He turned on the TV. There was no title screen, no prompt to begin, only a 2D, black-and-white image of a small man with a weirdly shaped gun, facing a platform with a door at the far end. The room was barren except for the character and the platform, but it reminded Steven of a doctor's office with its off-white walls and bright ceiling lights. A piano softly played a singular melody, but otherwise the game was silent.

The platform was too high up to jump up on to. Steven experimentally fired the gun. An orange blob shot out of his gun and splattered against the base of the platform, shining against the monochromatic room he was in. Steven fired the gun again, and a blue blob created a blue spot, just above the orange one. Nothing else happened. 

_Am I supposed to walk up to it?_ Steven nudged his character up to the orange blob. To his surprise, instead of hitting the wall behind the orange, he went through the orange part and came out the blue. _Must be portals of some kind,_ he thought to himself. Quickly, he realized the solution: shoot one portal at the base of the platform, and the other above the top of the platform, so he would 'fall' next to the door. He easily got up to and stepped through the door. On the other side was another, larger and more complex room, with three moving platforms instead of one stationary one.

"Alright game," Steven said, cracking his knuckles, "Let's see what you've got."

* * *

It wasn't that Amethyst was in any sort of rush, she just wanted to recover from the embarrassment from the way that she was forced to retreat into her gem. Really, _one_ spear? It took six for Garnet to go down and she was still swinging when she retreated into her gem. 

But whatever, she was always the first to regenerate. And first obviously meant best.

Amethyst fell gently to the bed as she finished regenerating, bouncing on its springs. Steven was sitting at the foot of the bed, surrounded by several crumpled up pieces of paper. "Steven!" she said, crawling up behind him and hugging him from behind.

"Ah! Hey, Amethyst! You're back!" Steven said, smiling and hugging her back. "That was pretty quick. You were only gone a couple hours."

"Yeah, I know. It's a talent." Amethyst rolled over so she was on her back. "What game is this? And why are you on the floor?"

"I'm on the ceiling. And it's a puzzle game and I'm stuck right now."

"Ooh, lemme get a crack at it. After I get some lunch." Amethyst hopped off the bed and jumped down into the living room. She quickly prepared a sandwich with various fixings from the fridge, to include some mayonnaise that Pearl would describe as 'questionable'. But whatever, Pearl wasn't here, and even is she was she would still finish it off. After all, being wasteful was bad.

Amethyst sat down next to Steven and took a huge bite out of her sandwich. "So what seems to be the problem, kiddo?" she asked, her mouth full of food.

Steven described his predicament. The puzzle game sounded complex, but Amethyst was able to follow what he was describing. The problem seemed to be something related to the spatial layout of two of the objects he needed to grab at the same time. "But I can't," Steven finished, "because they're too far apart."

"Are they?" Amethyst asked, squinting at the TV. "Didn't you say you just got a cube thing that you hadn't used yet?"

"Yeah?"

"Isn't that the same symbol on that panel over there?" Amethyst pointed at a tiny symbol on a section of wall.

Steven maneuvered the character over to the panel. He tapped a button and the character pulled out the cube Amethyst mentioned. "Hey, yeah they do match."

A bright light burst from the cube and the mark on the wall. Steven's character rose slightly into the air. The room rotated around fully, revealing that he was actually in a three-dimensional room, but could only view one 'face' at a time. The color pallet also shifted, going from the black and white from before to full, vibrant color. With a musical flourish, Steven's character slowly descended back to the ground.

"Whoa," Steven and Amethyst said at the same time. Amethyst sat up next to Steven. "Dude, this game is _cool_. What happens now?"

“Well, first I'm going to get those two parts.” He rotated the room to the left, and the two parts that were on opposite sides of the room were suddenly right next to each other. Steven easily grabbed both, and a door appeared. “Shall we?” Steven asked, jumping up next to the door.

Amethyst bowed. “After you, milord.”

Steven bowed back as he stepped through the door in the game, and they both started laughing. 

* * *

Ruby and Sapphire always regenerated at the same time if they were fused previously. It was always irregardless of how long they took to actually regenerate. If they were both forced to regenerate, they always did so simultaneously.

And this was no exception. Ruby and Sapphire came to be at the head of Steven's bed, and immediately embraced each other. "I missed you," Sapphire said, beaming.

"Missed you too," Ruby said, kissing her on the cheek. She held Sapphire at arms' length, shielding her eyes from the late afternoon sun. "You look good."

Sapphire giggled. "I look the same, silly. And so do you."

They both stepped off of the bed and walked to its foot, where Amethyst and Steven sat. "Ruby! Sapphire!" Steven said, standing up and hugging them both. "You're both back! We missed you!"

Amethyst let out a groan as she lay splayed out on the floor in front of the TV, her head facing the ceiling.

"Nice to see you too, Amethyst," Ruby said, rolling her eyes.

"No, it's not that. Hey, Ruby. Steven, I don't think this is possible."

"But it has to be!" Steven said, throwing his arms in the air. "They wouldn't put in something in the game that isn't solvable."

"What game?" Sapphire asked, sitting down on the bed to Steven's right. 

Steven and Amethyst gave them a quick recap of the game so far. "So, now," Steven continued, "We're stuck in this room." Steven pointed at the screen. The character was in what looked like a run-down warehouse setting, and was facing a fork in a path. One path led to a key, while the other lead to a locked door, and there was an impenetrable wall between the two paths that the teleportation portals wouldn't stick to. "So if you go down one path," Steven said, "The other thing vanishes." To demonstrate, he walked down the path that led to the key. As soon as he picked up the key, the door vanished. After a couple seconds, the room reset itself so Steven was back at the fork.

"Wow, that seems tough. Come on Sapphire, let's go." She tugged at Sapphire's hand, but Sapphire stayed put.

"Hmm," Sapphire rubbed a hand across her chin. "That is pretty tough. And there's nothing else you can do? No new ability that would let you solve it?"

"Well, we have found runes and stuff and we think there's messages hidden in the walls," Steven said, brandishing several sheets of paper with tracings of various symbols. "But we don't think the game would put the solution behind that. This looks like the way to the next area of the game. Besides, what kind of ability would even solve this puzzle?"

"Well," Sapphire said slowly, "What if you could travel through time?"

Amethyst raised an eyebrow. "Time travel? How would that help?"

"Well, you could go, get the key, and the door would disappear. Then you would go back in time, still holding the key, until before the door disappeared, then go and unlock the door with the key."

Steven stroked an invisible beard. "Hmm. Yeah, that would work."

"Except we don't have that," Amethyst reminded him, "All we have are these dumb crystals that we don't know what to do with. And _of course_ you would think of time travel, Saph."

Ruby sighed. Sapphire had started reviewing the notes Steven and Amethyst had taken down, and it looked like she was starting to get invested in this game. She wouldn't be able to be with her until the game was done, she realized. So she sat down next to Sapphire, took her hand, and with her other hand started looking over some of the maps they had drawn. The notation was difficult to follow because they kept having to add to it as new parts of the game were revealed. "What's this?" Ruby asked, pointing at a section of the map covered in jagged shapes.

"That's the Crystal Palace," Steven said. "At least that what we started calling it."

"Shouldn't the crystals you guys have go there? Or do something there?" 

Steven looked over at Amethyst. "That's what we thought, but we couldn't find anything."

"Well you should try again. Maybe you missed something."

Amethyst shrugged. "Yeah, sure." She sounded tired and defeated. 

Steven quickly traversed the map to the Crystal Temple section, and they spent a few minutes examining every facet of every room. At the back of the palace, they found what looked like a glass altar and a mural depicting... something. Only one of the 'faces' of the room had anything, with the other three being completely blank.

"Yeah, there's the dumb clock face."

"Clock?" Ruby squinted. "I don't see a clock."

"Sure, you can see the hands." Amethyst drew a circle with her finger. "The darker crystal is the circle part, and the really light part is the hands."

"Oh, I see it." Ruby couldn't, but she was having difficulty seeing much of anything at the moment.

"Steven, can we see the crystals you have?" Sapphire asked.

Steven opened up his inventory, showing them the eight pieces of crystal they had. Steven sighed. "Maybe we should take a break soon."

"Wait," Sapphire said, "Steven, those are the same color as the outer part of the clock face."

"So?" Amethyst asked.

"So what if the clock face isn't complete? What if it still needs hands?"

Steven's mouth slowly fell open. "No way," he whispered. The character jumped up to a platform just beneath the clock face and walked up to the it, crystal shard in hand. Steven tapped a button, and the character placed the shard into the mural, making part of the minute hand.

"No way!" Amethyst exclaimed, sitting up. Steven quickly placed the rest of the shards in place. As soon as he put the last shard, the Crystal Temple started to shake. The hands of the clock lit up, then began to rotate backwards. Steven's character rose up into the air until it was level with the center of the clock's face. The music swelled to a climax, and the character was struck by lightning. The sound caused everyone to jump in their seats, and Ruby nearly fell off of the bed. Sapphire caught her, and she grumbled a thanks, blushing slightly.

Steven's character fell to the ground, and the clock behind him faded away. "Now what?" Amethyst asked.

The character was glowing a color similar to one on Steven's controller, one they hadn't been using all game. "Wait a minute," Steven said. He had already jumped off the platform. He held the button down. The character animated backwards, jumping back up to the platform and walking backwards to the middle of the platform below the clock.

Steven's fist shot into the air. "We can time travel now!" he said. He turned behind him. "Sapphire, you're a genius!" 

Sapphire blushed slightly. "Aww, thank you." She kissed Steven on the cheek. "But you're the one that's gotten this far."

"Wait, Amethyst!" Steven said, "This means we can beat that lava place! We can dodge the lava now!"

Amethyst grinned. "Finally! I hated that place." She got up and started walking downstairs.

"Where are you going?" Steven called down, not taking his eyes off the screen.

"I'm ordering a pizza to celebrate. You two want anything?" Amethyst asked Ruby and Sapphire.

Sapphire looked at Ruby. "We've had pizza before, but always as Garnet."

Ruby shrugged. "I'm up for whatever. Let's keep it safe, though." She turned back to Amethyst. "No toppings on ours!"

"Ugh, you guys are so lame." Amethyst said, rolling her eyes as she dialed.

"Amethyst, Sapphire's idea worked! Whoa, this area's all old and jungle-y! Cool!"

* * *

Pearl was always the last to regenerate, which was fine by her. Regeneration called for a precision and attention to detail that Pearl found very natural. Sure, it meant she was out of commissions for hours, potentially even days at a time, but she was better about taking her time after the first time she was forced to retreat in front of Steven. Before, she would have taken upwards of three days to rectify the damage the boulder did to her, but she managed to cut that time down to half a day, and she managed to retain the degree of perfection that she sought from everything else in life.

Pearl gracefully touched down on the head of Steven's bed, and looked around. Steven, Amethyst, and Garnet were seated at the foot of the bed, surrounded by scraps of paper and open pizza boxes. They were huddled around the TV, playing what looked like a very complicated game. Pearl grimaced at the site. "I see you've been keeping busy," she said.

"Hey, Pearl," Steven said, slumping down in his seat until he was parallel to the floor. "We're stuck."

"And we're so close!" Amethyst said, standing up and beginning to pace. "Ugh, I'm not going to let this stupid game get the better of me."

"You need to be patient," Garnet said, finishing off a slice of pizza. "We've come so far, we cannot surrender now."

"But we've hit a dead end! We've explored every room, used every item that we've found, and now here we are! A dead end!"

Pearl looked outside. The stars that were visible twinkled in the late night sky. "Steven, have you been playing all day?"

"Maybe?" Steven said tentatively. "It's a really good game. It's just really, _really_ hard. Amethyst and Ruby and Sapphire and Garnet all helped. Maybe you can help? I think we're almost done."

Pearl sat down next to Steven. Playing a game wasn't something she wanted to do at the moment, but the rest of the team seemed pretty involved in it. Even Garnet was silently looking over sheets of paper with symbols drawn all over them. "Okay," Pearl said slowly, "What seems to be the problem?"

The three of them provided a quick summary of the game so far. It seemed to be an incredibly devious puzzle game, with Pearl honestly impressed that Steven managed to figure out some of the puzzles they were describing. 

"But," Steven said, gathering some pieces of paper, "There've been these symbols all throughout the game. We wrote down most of them, because we think it's code. But we can't figure out the code, and now we're in the last room of the game and we're stuck."

Pearl examined the last room. It was a completely empty room, and Steven rotated the viewpoint around to demonstrate this, except for the symbols on each of the four walls. "We know it's a message, but we just don't know what it says."

"Yeah, and we've been trying for almost an hour." Amethyst said, falling to the floor. 

Garnet handed Pearl a stack of papers. "I believe it is a substitution cipher, but we don't have the key," she said, her voice solemn.

Pearl nodded and reviewed the copies they made. It was indeed a substitution cipher - Pearl could see patters in the order of the symbols, but it was difficult to keep track of her guesses. 

Steven handed her a piece of blank paper and a pencil. "Do you need this?"

"No, but thank you, Steven." Pearl focused her eyes, then projected a hologram onto the floor. Amethyst and Garnet backed out of the way, and Pearl's projection filled most of the space in between her and the TV. 

First, she sorted all of the unique symbols she could find - 26 in all. That was a good sign - it meant they were all letters. She quickly found and identified the five most common runes. Then, she replaced them with the five most common English letters: E, T, A, O, I. Quickly, over a third of the symbols were replaced, and she saw a couple complete words and several 'T _ E'. So that middle symbol had to be H. And from there, the rest fell into place. Taking a couple educated guesses (Garnet had written down what was in the rooms that had specific messages (for example, a room with snakes allowed her to guess that the message in that room was 'BEWARE SNAKES')), she soon had most of the alphabet decrypted. "There we go," Pearl said, smiling. "Does that solve your problem?"

Steven and Amethyst stared open-mouthed at the hologram in front of them. "Pearl's a genius," Steven whispered. He picked up a pencil, then got to work decoding the final message, frequently referring to the alphabet Pearl displayed. 

The message turned out to be a series of instructions and locations to revisit. Steven leaned back. "So we have to go back."

"So it seems," Garnet said. "Good job, Pearl."

Pearl blushed. "Oh, it was nothing, really. Just some basic frequency analysis, nothing too extravagant." 

Steven got to work visiting the locations, which were spread out all throughout the game. "I must say, this game is quite beautiful," Pearl commented as Steven maneuvered through puzzles he already knew the solutions to, bounding from jungle to volcano to warehouse back to the laboratory. "And the camera rotation is an elegant twist."

"You mean massive headache," Amethyst said, finishing off the last of the pizza. "You should have seen the four-dimensional room."

"Yeah," Steven said, "Garnet, I still don't get how you managed to figure that one out."

Garnet shrugged. "I'm just too smart for this game, I guess," she said.

"Steven," Pearl said, "Why don't you play more games like these? This seems like an excellent exercise of your problem solving skills."

"Because this game is cruel, Pearl." Garnet said, "It seeks to deceive and be as difficult as possible."

"Oh." As Steven completed each of the instructions from the last room, a dot of light appeared above his character's head, and followed him. By the time he got back to the empty room to complete the last instruction, he was surrounded by the dots, their rainbow of lights playing off of the room.

Steven exhaled. "Okay, last step. You guys ready?"

Garnet put her hand on Steven's shoulder. "You can do this," she said, smiling.

"Yeah man," Amethyst said, "Finish this stupid game so we can all move on with our lives."

"Yeah, this game started out fun, but now it's just hard." Steven said. "Oh well. At least I beat it with you guys."

Pearl smiled. "Happy to help."

Steven inputted the last instruction. The dots surrounded him, and he was consumed by light. The screen went white, and everyone shielded their eyes at the sudden brightness. Then the screen dimmed, to reveal the character, with no tools, starting at a door. Steven nudged the character through the door, opening it, and stepped outside. There was a large forest, and Pearl could hear birds chirping and a waterfall in the distance. A piano softly underlay the natural sounds that filled the room. "It's beautiful," Garnet said.

"We're free," Steven said. "We made it out of the... wherever we were."

"And that's it?" Amethyst asked. "Lame."

"Well I think it's very pretty," Pearl said. She stood up. "Congratulations, Steven."

"I couldn't have done it without you guys," Steven said dramatically, standing up and stretching. He pulled Pearl into a hug. "I'm glad you're back, by the way."

Garnet pulled them both into a hug. "As am I."

Steven grabbed Amethyst, who was attempting to walk away, and pulled her into the hug as well. "I'm glad you're all back. Thanks for helping me beat the game."

"Of course, Steven."

And as the four of them sat there, the game slowly faded to black, engulfing them in darkness. "I hate that game, though," Amethyst said.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcannon: If Garnet retreats into her gems, Ruby and Sapphire come back at the exact same time, every time. Also, Sapphire's a sucker for bad science fiction, especially ones with time travel.
> 
> More nonsense fluff with present-day Steven this time. SpaceTime! is pretty directly inspired by Portal, Fez, and Braid, all of which rank among top games of mine. Me having re-played through Fez recently might have inspired this story. Maybe.


End file.
